I have a hard time buying this idea that Mourinho wasn’t supported by the board. United has the second highest payroll in the premier league, only to City’s is higher, so obviously the Glazers are willing to spend money. Since Mourinho arrived at United he had brought in;

The transfer amounts vary a little from site to site and these are some of the lowest I could find, but still, this accounts for ~£360m. Even accounting for inflation this is more spend than at any other club where Mourinho has managed. That is one hell of a lot of support and yet it wasn’t enough for Mourinho. Some of these players would have commercial value; Zlatan, Pogba - maybe Lukaku & Sanchez - but seriously does anyone believe that Woodward had heard of some of these players let alone what their value would be.

We have all read about the piece of paper with 5 names on it, but none of us know who these players were or what position they played. Football has move on from the time when United showed up and told clubs how much we were going to pay for their star player. Because of television money a club like Leicester can tell United to push a rope when we offer £65M for Harry Mcguire because they do not need the cash. Mourinho was financially backed by the board, it wasn’t the boards fault the Mourinho could not get the players to buy into his style of football. The longer Mourinho was at United the more he reminded me of Bill Walsh the 49er head coach, after winning 3 Super Bowls the rest of the league caught on to what he was doing. Instead of making changes to his style of play he continued playing the same way and blamed the losses on the players that could not execute his plan. If players are told over and over that they are shit and need to be replaced, soon they will start to believe it and perform accordingly.

Ole has a long way to go before his resume comes close to Mourinho’s, but what he has proved in only 6 games is that he has been able to get much better performance from the same players than Mourinho could.

The transfer numbers you quote are an important part of a balanced discussion
I personally have two issues i struggle to get my head round

Some of the numbers just "seem" wrong in as much as they make no sense
Pogba at £89m seems right
A world class player who is a proven shirt seller keeps everybody happy and i can see and understand that
Lee Grant at £1.5m is also fine but don't forget we sold our reserve keeper for more than we paid for Grant so Glazernomics at work and in the open
Matic at £40m seems the right price for a player Jose knew and was happy with.Again no other comment

Zlatan on a free was not building anything for the future of this football team.It was part of building a future relationship for the merchandising arm with the sponsors.It followed in the footsteps of Falcao and Schweinsteriger and the overstap by Wazza for two years longer after his legs had gone
All 3 were done at this level a long time before they joined us,especially the last two.This can be seen by the fact that all 3 are still enjoying a fabulous career is the money only based MLS
I still don't know,and never will know whether Jose asked for Zlatan or whether he was told by Woodward that he "had been signed"
If you listen to Ole's innocent remarks on current tranfer policy he tells you that "i have no say in tranfers.They are all done by others(presumably Woodward).He can ask my opinion and i will give it him if he asks but the deals are negotiated by others"
Now if that is the case it is not a massive leap if faith to suggest it has always been Woodward and Woodward alone and to be honest he is incapable of making football decisions.Just as Levy at Spurs is

Mkhitarian at £27m also sounds like the right price and again satisfied everybody at the start
The price was cheap,the potential was obvious,the number 7 shirt selling potential was also evident so everybody happy
When it didn't work out the swap for Sanchez seems,in hindsight like a good way out for the same reasons.I still think he has a chance of making it as a United player if he can shake off the injuries

The ones i struggle with are Bailly(£30m),Lindelof(£31m),Lukaku(£75m),Fred(£52m)
That's almost £190m and none of them seem like Jose signings and none of them seem close to being worth what the alledged fees are reported as
Lukaku has a lot of room in as much as the makeweight value of Wazza could be anything but nobody else was after Fred and he plays like he has never seen a football so who asked for him and who agreed £52m
If it was Jose then he has gone down in my estimation
If it was Woodward,as Ole hints at then that makes sense and as such that's where the blame should lay and not with Jose

@RED3BUTION, as long as he'd have spent over 2 years there, where his disruptive and abrasive style would have stripped his team of the will to live, and he'd have inevitably missed out on a couple of targets, so would've started taking issue with the board, the club's ambassadors, his players wive's audacity to have children, calling the players spoilt brats, blaming everyone around him for everything wrong, and failing in a self destructive cloud again; I'd have no issues whatsoever.

Ok - that was more than a bit flippant, and probably a bit unfair, but I do feel all the failures/sackings are taking a toll on his ego and his personality. He never really seemed happy or comfortable here, did he? That wasn't Porto's or Chelsea's first José at all. Although I suspect it was mainly due to Pep - his old enemy dominating so convincingly.

Good one Glorio! He will need to reinvent himself for sure with the millenial generation. Lol.
I think control is something we can all agree that the most successful coaches enjoy in their tenure. Jose has become too paranoid I think. I suppose he has changed but I think he is still relevant and he still has a winning track record so I suppose you have to take the honey with the bees.

"You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand." -The Dark Knight

Good one Glorio! He will need to reinvent himself for sure with the millenial generation. Lol.
I think control is something we can all agree that the most successful coaches enjoy in their tenure. Jose has become too paranoid I think. I suppose he has changed but I think he is still relevant and he still has a winning track record so I suppose you have to take the honey with the bees.

One big lesson in life isd that past performance is no guide to the future

I understood Ray's utterances to represent a hypothesis. We don't have an inside story. Amongst the more real and plausible ones is what he has consistently said is the Glazer's penchant to maximize profits. Tie it all in and it starts shredding counter evidence and building up the scenario that Jose was possibly disgruntled by the level of ambition being shown him by the board in the lack of support in the transfer market. You task a reputed manager to get you back to glory and second-guess him on transfers. Funny isn't it. He probably saw the hand-writing on the wall. Yes you can't get every player you want but aren't we supposed to be one of the richest clubs and you mean we couldn't get one out of 5? Was Neymar on the list?
So he had signed 2 prior, how does that work out if they are not working out the way he wants. Hiring Jose was not Jose's fault, his MO was already out there. What exactly is the point of getting him here to give him a different direction. He hardly trusts youngsters and we know he likes to create competition within his teams. Look at all his successful teams and see the richness. So everyone knows how Jose likes to work maybe except the board.
You undermine a manager like that and you think the players will not notice. I will leave that there. Unfortunately that was his story.

Ole is enjoying a super patch and long may it continue. I hope that truly all these players required was a hand over the shoulders and perhaps euphemisms to help their ego. I am happier the way we are playing because it is in stark contrast with the mood when Jose was here. Pogba is a player that commands a lot of influence in the dressing room it seems and Jose had no hope going up against him in that team.

I have a hard time buying this idea that Mourinho wasn’t supported by the board. United has the second highest payroll in the premier league, only to City’s is higher, so obviously the Glazers are willing to spend money. Since Mourinho arrived at United he had brought in;

The transfer amounts vary a little from site to site and these are some of the lowest I could find, but still, this accounts for ~£360m. Even accounting for inflation this is more spend than at any other club where Mourinho has managed. That is one hell of a lot of support and yet it wasn’t enough for Mourinho. Some of these players would have commercial value; Zlatan, Pogba - maybe Lukaku & Sanchez - but seriously does anyone believe that Woodward had heard of some of these players let alone what their value would be.

We have all read about the piece of paper with 5 names on it, but none of us know who these players were or what position they played. Football has move on from the time when United showed up and told clubs how much we were going to pay for their star player. Because of television money a club like Leicester can tell United to push a rope when we offer £65M for Harry Mcguire because they do not need the cash. Mourinho was financially backed by the board, it wasn’t the boards fault the Mourinho could not get the players to buy into his style of football. The longer Mourinho was at United the more he reminded me of Bill Walsh the 49er head coach, after winning 3 Super Bowls the rest of the league caught on to what he was doing. Instead of making changes to his style of play he continued playing the same way and blamed the losses on the players that could not execute his plan. If players are told over and over that they are shit and need to be replaced, soon they will start to believe it and perform accordingly.

Ole has a long way to go before his resume comes close to Mourinho’s, but what he has proved in only 6 games is that he has been able to get much better performance from the same players than Mourinho could.

Would have been nice to hear him say something or two. Might have added to our discussion.

I recognize Mourinho has been back by the board. I also understand that he has given back trophies though not the main ones, but he has sown progress from LVG and he had asked for more to chase the upgraded competition. Perfectly logical. I hope you're not implying that since he's been backed in the past he had no right to complain if he's not backed in the future. Not when the competition Liverpool and Manchester City were making in-roads in the market. I don't know about you but unless we have a super scouting system, which we don't or a very prodcutive youth system, which we don't, then we should be competing in that market as well.

Do you think that Mourinho was trying to put his players down by criticizing them in public? I think he was challenging them to step up. William Gallas said as much. He coaches in this way. Unfortunately I think Pogba was the one who he needed to cuddle because he seems to have a massive personality in the dressing room.

Mourinho's teams are cohesive defensively, then from there it's a game of razor-thin margins, this is where Mourinho thrives, where the margins rely on detail. He was never able to get that from this team and I think it had to do with a lack of defensive reinforcements which still shows even in this period with Ole. I will say that the game against Spurs turned in our favor after Sissoko limped off. He had made sure the brilliance of Pogba was not felt much.
Lastly Mourinho and that group had become completely incompatible, given everything that seemed to work against Mourinho some of it self inflicted. But this is the man, he likes adversity, because I suppose he feels humans/teams tend to form more readily in this state so he invites it. I will not rule him out of finding another top job and meeting us in a tournament and then maybe we can appreciate his work from afar. Too bad he can't say a thing about his time here.

I saw the article about the “gag order” over the weekend, don’t give it much value one way or the other, Mourinho will do and say whatever is best for Mourinho. I do wonder if this type of clause (non-disclosure) is common in severance packages in the premier league.

When Mourinho signed a contract extension I felt it would be either a turning point which would have him staying at a club past his usual three year melt down or the beginning of the end, unfortunately it was the latter. Another £70+ M on players was still not enough to satisfy Mourinho, maybe he thought that the contract extension allowed him to publicly bad mouth the teams younger player, the fans and the board without ramifications. It hasn’t been one single act that cause his firing, rather is has been an accumulation of press conference meltdown, in-fighting with his players, piss-poor on field performances and disrespecting Woodward and the board. I also think that re-signing or keeping players was also a factor.

In My Opinion; Mourinho has been looking for an out since he signed the extension. I think he has been using his very public fights with current and ex-players to force the board into sacking him. I do not normally use The Mail as a source but this story quoting Paul Scholes just about sums up my thinking about Mourinho this season;

Paul Scholes “I felt he (Mourinho) didn't want to be there, he said. He engineered his move away perfectly in the end.”

Good one Glorio! He will need to reinvent himself for sure with the millenial generation. Lol.
I think control is something we can all agree that the most successful coaches enjoy in their tenure. Jose has become too paranoid I think. I suppose he has changed but I think he is still relevant and he still has a winning track record so I suppose you have to take the honey with the bees.

One big lesson in life isd that past performance is no guide to the future

I agree....a more practical lesson is that in life, there are simply no guarantees. Past performances can be a guide to the future. Some people call it experience.

"You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand." -The Dark Knight

Good one Glorio! He will need to reinvent himself for sure with the millenial generation. Lol.
I think control is something we can all agree that the most successful coaches enjoy in their tenure. Jose has become too paranoid I think. I suppose he has changed but I think he is still relevant and he still has a winning track record so I suppose you have to take the honey with the bees.

One big lesson in life isd that past performance is no guide to the future

I agree....a more practical lesson is that in life, there are simply no guarantees. Past performances can be a guide to the future. Some people call it experience.

Experience is great, hopefully it takes a lifetime to build never stop growing. The problem arises with stop learning and adapting and instead just keep doing what has worked in the past and then the same mistakes - Chelsea and Inter and Real Madrid and Chelsea and United keep happening over and over.

I do think Mourinho will get another manege job with a big club but his day in the premier league I believe are over.

I have a hard time buying this idea that Mourinho wasn’t supported by the board. United has the second highest payroll in the premier league, only to City’s is higher, so obviously the Glazers are willing to spend money. Since Mourinho arrived at United he had brought in;

The transfer amounts vary a little from site to site and these are some of the lowest I could find, but still, this accounts for ~£360m. Even accounting for inflation this is more spend than at any other club where Mourinho has managed. That is one hell of a lot of support and yet it wasn’t enough for Mourinho. Some of these players would have commercial value; Zlatan, Pogba - maybe Lukaku & Sanchez - but seriously does anyone believe that Woodward had heard of some of these players let alone what their value would be.

We have all read about the piece of paper with 5 names on it, but none of us know who these players were or what position they played. Football has move on from the time when United showed up and told clubs how much we were going to pay for their star player. Because of television money a club like Leicester can tell United to push a rope when we offer £65M for Harry Mcguire because they do not need the cash. Mourinho was financially backed by the board, it wasn’t the boards fault the Mourinho could not get the players to buy into his style of football. The longer Mourinho was at United the more he reminded me of Bill Walsh the 49er head coach, after winning 3 Super Bowls the rest of the league caught on to what he was doing. Instead of making changes to his style of play he continued playing the same way and blamed the losses on the players that could not execute his plan. If players are told over and over that they are shit and need to be replaced, soon they will start to believe it and perform accordingly.

Ole has a long way to go before his resume comes close to Mourinho’s, but what he has proved in only 6 games is that he has been able to get much better performance from the same players than Mourinho could.

The point about backing is not really about over the entire course of his tenure. Last season Mourinho took United to second in the league, but well behind Man City. So there had been improvement, but more was needed - we finished 19 points behind City after all. After giving him a new contract, we then didn't back him in the transfer market, with Woodward over-ruling him on the defenders he wanted to bring in.

I agree....a more practical lesson is that in life, there are simply no guarantees. Past performances can be a guide to the future. Some people call it experience.

Experience is great, hopefully it takes a lifetime to build never stop growing. The problem arises with stop learning and adapting and instead just keep doing what has worked in the past and then the same mistakes - Chelsea and Inter and Real Madrid and Chelsea and United keep happening over and over.

I do think Mourinho will get another manege job with a big club but his day in the premier league I believe are over.

I agree. But it says something about Mourinho that he is still in demand even with all the 3rd season syndrome and psychological baggage that follows him .
To my mind he is a reductionist tactician; he has broken football down to the barest essentials and that's what I think makes him attractive to big clubs whose complex structure require someone who can simplify things a bit.
He's been sacked though but I hope lessons have been learnt on both sides. Cheers!

"You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand." -The Dark Knight

The point about backing is not really about over the entire course of his tenure. Last season Mourinho took United to second in the league, but well behind Man City. So there had been improvement, but more was needed - we finished 19 points behind City after all. After giving him a new contract, we then didn't back him in the transfer market, with Woodward over-ruling him on the defenders he wanted to bring in.

Trying to catch up with City we spent another £70+M, add to that the swap of MickyT and Sanchez, we are up around the £100M mark. Why are we spending £53M of a player like Fred - or why Fred at all - no one but Woodward and Mourinho can answer. My point is that we are not unwilling to spend big money on transfers, rather we are just useless at picking talent.

Eric Bailly - Flashes of brilliance mix in with moments on lunacy.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic - Just what was needed to take the pressure off Rashford & Martial and give them time to mature. Played far too many minutes as a starter, especially in his second year.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan - Started out looking like he was just what we needed and ended up being the last thing Mourinho wanted.

Paul Pogba - Could not/would not fit into Mourinho’s team and Mourinho just wasn’t going to change to accommodate him. The World Cup showed the type of player he could be when given the chance to play with freedom.

Victor Lindelof - When he first arrived, he looked frightened to take a chance, but this season has discovered his best style of playing.

Romelu Lukaku - When used correctly he can be the goal scorer that every team needs, when not used correctly he just takes up a position.

Nemanja Matic - A good all-around player and a decent buy; but this season, until Ole arrive, he looked slow, clumsy and out of his depth. Since Ole’s arrived he is back to the player we saw prior to this season.

Alexis Sanchez - His arrival and how Mourinho used him totally stagnated Martial’s development, and overall wasn’t good for the team. Not sure who of the current starters I would drop to start him.

Diogo Dalot - Has shown some potential but he is still learning the position and the league.

Fred - Looks like he has lot of energy, but I just don’t see where he fits into the starting lineup.

Lee Grant - A good buy in that he allowed the youngster to go out on loan.